Berserker

This Paw Tracks release is the work of Animal Collective's Panda Bear and Other Music's Scott Mou.

There's a big print buzz right now (new Johnson book, more Gladwell clappy-clap) about the increasing complexity of so-called base pop culture-- the content's smut but the plots have thickened and the demands on the audience have multiplied. Television, blockbuster films, and video games get the inches, but I'm wondering to what extent the same ideas might apply to pop music. This Jane release for instance-- if we take it for after-party or ambient (why not?)-- awfully busy next to Eno records with the same wallpaper intent. Past that, so many of us can read and work etc., while listening to stuff that's kicking and screaming for our attention. Maybe we just need something buzzing in the background to keep us pinched, but all that's to say: Even our most passive listening experiences-- willed or de facto-- have grown more demanding.

(Pretty good, right?)

Jane began as an informal collaboration between Noah Lennox (Animal Collective's Panda Bear) and Scott Mou (DJ Casio, aka Other Music's tall, long-haired Asian guy who, I think, has heard every record ever made) laying down skinny beats and drones. They released two CD-Rs in-store (I've only heard the one nicked Paradise), and for Berserker they seem to have picked, packaged, and remastered the passages most apropos to its unspoken Young Prayer-Plus demeanor. That record, we'll say, demanded too much from me, so I always felt Mou's gorgeous textures and sense of build played good foil-- Lennox lets loose, but Mou's patient grooves and pink noise always cushion his fall. Yeah, these tracks are jammy or whatever, but I'd much rather that than fucking "Waltz For Koop"-- the moments worth paying attention to here are, in fact, transfixing.

Berserker's title track and the "AGG Report" schaffel are Jane par (by now the triply-released "Berserker" must be their theme song), but "Shipping Away" is why the duo are more than an Animal Collective footnote. The song starts primordial, slowly climbing out its cocoon, conscious of its own beat-woozy evolution until Mou's death comet breaks suffocate Lennox, and the two spend the last three minutes destroying all the evidence. The next track, "Swan", is 24 minutes of bonus organ drones and echo box-- about as much time as we need to unwind after "Shipping Away"-- if we, like, listened.

I hinted above Jane have recorded other stuff that just wouldn't have fit Berserker's wind-down post-party vibe. One track on Paradise is, no joke, a 21-minute microgoth masterpiece. Paw Tracks' website suggests there's some Panda Bear Dances 12" on the way, so maybe that's it. In any case, this Lennox-Mou collaboration has a lot more potential than Berserker leads on-- pay attention?